Tag Archives: paperbacks

When I say printed word, I mean that literally. Not the electronic word nor the spoken word but everything from books to newspapers are in jeopardy of a discontinued existence. Nearly everyone these days has a computer and is connected to the internet, even the poorest people. In essence the computer has supplanted the TV and in fact could take over that role, completely being one system for everything: music, TV and internet resource/communications tool.

Many of us don’t enjoy sitting at our desks, reading or even watching a computer screen for hours. But then we have laptops so you can move to a more comfortable setting. Imagine a large, wide-screen TV and your console (read keyboard) at your couch, remote and wireless. Weird future? No, we have this ability right now and it will only be a matter of years until we see this as a common evolution.

On top of making computer usage more comfortable, there are a myriad of PDAs (personal digital assistants) or whatever fancy name they’re branded under. These are the small, light, handheld devices to which you can download images or text. Some people are already reading stories on devices as small as Palm Pilots or the slightly bigger ebook styles that would be the equivalent size of a thin paperback. So it won’t matter what you want. There will be some form of electronic medium on which to view images, listen to music and read written works.

What still stands in the way of full electronic immersion for the common person is that the cost is somewhat prohibitive, not every book you want is available, the tactile feel is very different between paper and plastic/metal and we don’t always like reading onscreen. One trend that has become prevalent with computers and the internet is our short attention spans. People like short paragraphs to read and stories of a certain length. Fill the screen with a huge block of text and our attention deficit minds wander off to another webpage or site. We’re not willing to sit as long to read onscreen. How that will translate to palm readers overall remains to be seen.

You could say the internet is perpetuating a lack of concentration and patience. So how long a paragraph can someone put on any of these reading ebooks and still keep someone from wandering away? I doubt Victor Hugo will read well on an ebook format, but I could be wrong. So what we’ll have is shorter and shorter sentences and paragraphs and perhaps even books, which could lead to a new fad in literature, that of simplified writing. There are already twitter websites. That’s worrisome in itself for the intricacies and depths of plot.

Even more problematic is the future for writers. There will be more internet publishers, not willing to actually hire a copy editor and pay them a decent wage to correct a manuscript. Instead, they’ll offer the editor a portion of the net sales, so the copy editor or proofreader will work for free or even peanuts unless the book sells through. Authors will not even get an advance against royalties but again a share of the books that have actually sold. They’ll write first and maybe never get paid later or be paid a couple of bucks.

Now most writers have written first, and sold later so that, you could say, is the same as it’s always been. But copy editors don’t work for free and writers now can “sell” their books to a publisher and still get less than they should if they sold to a traditional publisher. With low cost output to the epublisher, an author should get a much larger percentage. If the epublisher also does print on demand paper publishing than there should be a separate rate for that as the overhead would be slightly higher for shipping and printing. But how well does an epublisher advertise or do they leave it up to internet searches rather than promoting an author? This too can make the difference between putting your book on a dusty eshelf or having it actually sell.

What does the publisher put out? Very little in costs. They acquire the book and the editing for free and run a website that lists these items, where people can stop in to buy them. Perhaps the publisher must run the manuscript through their program to format it properly but once you have it set up, it’s not that much work. If a novel is bought, the publisher gets the lion’s share and some of the rest of the money is divvied up to the author, editor and perhaps artist. This is a way to have authors work for free.

This may sound like a prediction but it is already happening with many epublishers. As well, with news readily available on the internet, actual newspaper sales are dropping. Some newspapers have stopped paying freelance journalists. Why bother when everyone and his robodog is sending in articles? Writing has only been a rich profession for a few but it may well become one of the poorest paid professions, if pay still enters into it.

My advice to all writers: don’t give up writing but don’t quit your day job either. Be very careful what epublishers offer. Ask them about advertising, marketing and where your books will be shown. Do they actually copy edit (everyone’s books can use a copy edit)? Do they also offer paper copies and what percentage can you expect? Also is that percentage of books produced or sold and of net or reatil price? Very important, that. The electronic future does not seem to offer riches to authors.

I found this an interesting look at the book shop industry. My position on this is as a writer and avid reader. I have to admit I don’t have terribly books published as yet, and I get most of my books from the library, but I have a few ideas.

I’m wondering about the rise in self-publishing. I feel partnerships of self-publishers and independent booksellers could really make a go of it if they got organised.
Self-publishers would have a place to distribute their books, booksellers would have a large range of quirky books to sell.

Maybe I’m a dreamer who had fantasies of running a bookshop and reading books all day, but it’s an idea. Ideas are good things, aren’t they?

So I thought I would expand on the mass market industry of books, as well as respond to this. Paperbacks run on a different business model than many other items in the merchandise world. Clothes are bought and marked up at least 100%, with the onus on the store to get rid of the slow selling items. Comic books have a split, where some are bought nonreturnable for a larger discount, while others may be bought returnable with a lower discount. The nonreturnable discount is often around 50-60%. Books, both paperback and hard cover, traditionally have a marked up rate of 40%. Although these are supposed “suggested retail prices” that are printed on the book and the bookstore may get as much as a 60% discount, no one sells above a suggest retail price, and may sell the book at a slight discount.

This was the only way that publishers saw to get someone to take a book, a new author, on spec, so that the buyer wouldn’t be stuck with dead stock and that they could return items for credit. Paperbacks (traditionally called mass market books) are stripped of their covers. Trade paperbacks and hard covers must be shipped back for credit. The return shipping is at the cost of the buyer. Initial shipping costs of books may be included for certain quantities or the book store may have to pay shipping on top.

Of course all publishers have distribution warehouses, whether their own or a contracted one, with reliable shipping and distribution. If the publisher is a small press, they may mail out/ship their own books. Distribution is the hardest part of the game. You might have the greatest book since the Bible but if people don’t see it, they can’t buy it. The other part of this is, of course, advertising.

Now we get to Carolyn’s point about self-publishers and independent book sellers. The problems I just mentioned can affect the self-published author. How do you advertise and distribute your book? Should you be successful in advertising, how do you get the book to a hundred different bookstores across the country and in a timely manner? I have edited a fair number of manuscripts, some of them then self-published to different success levels. The most successful was the one called Where to Walk Your Dog in Vancouver. Ross had me edit for grammar, consistency and style, as well as checking the page proofs. He did his own layout and then took the book to a printers. The cost breaks are usually at 2000 books. He also found someone to distribute his book and it was region specific. He sold out his first run.

With mass market publishing, publishers may print 50,000-100,000 books or more…or less. Hardcovers would start at 2000 and go up depending on the popularity of the author. This model may have changed in recent years, which I found out when I asked a published friend when her book (in hard cover and trade paper) was going to go into mass market. She said her books didn’t sell enough to warrant mass. In the days of old new authors would be published in the paperback format first and only if their names and stories caught on would they go to hard cover or trade. Nowadays the publisher would rather only make 2000 books than have 45,000 returned.

So a self-publisher may have to deal with what to do with books that don’t sell. It may be bite the bullet and leave them there until they’re put in the super cheap discount bin, or going around to local bookstores dropping off and picking up copies. At the bookstore I was at we sometimes had local people come by with books and comic/graphic novels. They were often sold on consignment, which can be 60-40, 50-50, 40-60 or any other amount in between. Often the books didn’t sell and the author never came back for them.

Self-published books can also range from really good to abysmal. There is no editor or publishing house saying, this doesn’t meet a set of standards. At the same time when publishing houses have a set limit on what they can and will publish it allows an author another way for their work to be seen. A smart author will get some professional copy editing. It will make the book look more professional but there is no guarantee that it will sell. Understanding or paying someone for graphic design and layout will also help.

So yes, a bookseller might take self-published books but it would take some severe dedication on the part of the the self-published author. There is the in-between world of print on demand (POD), which is being used moreso by authors and publishers, especially those that run small presses. I don’t know enough about this area to talk knowledgably on it yet.